quotations about opportunity
Opportunity is coy, is swift, is gone, before the slow, the unobservant, the indolent, or the careless can seize her.
ORISON SWETT MARDEN
Architects of Fate
Opportunity to a statesman is as the just degree of heat to chemists; it perfects all the work.
SIR JOHN SUCKLING
attributed, Day's Collacon
The man who sees an opportunity and does nothing is asleep with his eyes open.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVEN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Corrino
Did Mr. Woolworth, who created a chain of more than one thousand five and ten cent stores, wait on opportunity? Did Thomas A. Edison and thousands of men and women who have achieved big things wait on opportunity? Decidedly not! They either created their own opportunity or prepared themselves to receive it when it presented itself.
WALTER MATTHEWS
"Opportunity", Human Life from Many Angles
Our most significant opportunities will be found in times of greatest difficulty.
THOMAS S. MONSON
Pathways to Perfection
Opportunity is one of those things that depend greatly on the eye of the beholder.
ANDREW SANCHEZ
Technical Support Essentials
Your opportunity is just as good, perhaps even better, than any other man's. Get to work where you are. And get to work right now.
WILLIAM A. RADFORD
Cement World, April 15, 1908
To be a great man it is necessary to turn to account all opportunities.
LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
attributed, Day's Collacon
While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
Sometimes, you need a door slammed in your face before you can hear opportunity knock.
JAMES GEARY
Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists
Men do with opportunities as children do at the seashore; they fill their little hands with sand, and then let the grains fall through, one by one, till all are gone.
T. JONES
attributed, The Book of Positive Quotations
Oft does the mind wish for lost opportunities.
PETRONIUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Individual opportunity is a powerful component of American ideology, powerful enough to elicit support for the system from all quarters, even from many exploited and unorganized workers who are at their bosses' mercy. If workers destined to be used up and discarded by employers cling nevertheless to "the American Way," it is not because they are ignorant of their destiny, but because they sense it. They feel that their only ray of hope for a satisfying life emanates from the "opportunity" the American system provides.
JEFF SCHMIDT
Disciplined Minds
Opportunity is the great bawd.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac, 1735
Opportunities are importunities; they are like flowers that fade at night; seize them, therefore, while they last.
G. S. BOWES
attributed, Day's Collacon
Danger will wink on opportunity.
JOHN MILTON
Comus
Opportunity knocks once at every man's door and then keeps on knocking.
GEORGE ADE
"The Undecided Bachelor", Knocking the Neighbors
No great man ever complains of want of opportunity--no, nor of any want except of being wanting to himself.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks: 1838-1842
Although opportunity is more definite than luck, and is apparently governed by more distinguishable laws, it cannot always be corralled and is at times elusive. It is an undeniable fact that equal opportunity does not present itself with apparent fairness; but it is also as positive a fact that opportunity is likely to come to those who seek it, and to avoid those who make no effort to meet it or to prepare themselves to entertain it when it does come.
NATHANIEL CLARK FOWLER
Getting a Start
It is not often that a man can make opportunities for himself. But he can put himself in such shape that when or if the opportunities come he is ready to take advantage of them.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography